


to be human

by fillory



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Aromantic Character, Aromanticism, Gen, Internalized Arophobia, Notfic, Spoilers for MAG 160, overuse of em dashes and italics but y'know that's life sometimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:41:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 688
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21749941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fillory/pseuds/fillory
Summary: Jonathan Sims is in his thirties and half-monstrous by the time he first hears the termaromantic.
Relationships: Jonathan Sims & Alice "Daisy" Tonner
Comments: 16
Kudos: 136





	to be human

Imagine Jonathan Sims dating Georgie in uni because she asks him out and everything he’s read tells him it’s the natural progression of their friendship; John feeling inadequate because he loves her, he does, but he’s unable to mirror the kind of love she’s showing him no matter how hard he tries; John playing the role of “normal boyfriend” but becoming increasingly tense and snappish over the performance until finally she breaks up with him, and he can’t help the feeling of relief that it brings and _what does that mean for him_ , that he can break his best friend’s heart and feel _relief?_ What does that _make_ him?

Georgie promises to stay friends, but slowly fades from his life until he’s on the run and needs a place to stay where no one will look for him.

John in the Institute, turning down invitations for coffee with an abrasiveness learned from years of people calling him _prick_ , _arsehole_ , _robot_. When Michael tells him he’s becoming a monster it feels almost inevitable: an external realization of the part of him that has always wondered, not so deep down, always questioned his own humanity. “I think I’m broken,” he tells Daisy one day, after the Buried transforms their former mutual distaste into a burgeoning friendship. “I think whatever it is that’s making me hurt people—I think it’s always been in me.” He takes a breath, sets down his pen, and admits, “I’ve never loved anyone.”

Daisy looks at him over the rim of her mug, steam coiling up into her face from her coffee. “John, you literally risked your life for me last month. For Basira. That’s not love?”

John stammers— “That’s not— I mean— I don’t think that that—”

“It doesn’t count because we’re ‘just’ friends?” She leans forward in the beaten-up armchair she dragged into his office last week, and rests her mug on her knee. “I know about being a monster, you know that. I know what you mean, that the seed of it was in you all along; I saw it in the way you asked me questions in our first interview. But I don’t think your ability to love has anything to do with it.”

“But Martin”—and he’s blushing, he knows he’s blushing—“on the tape with Elias, he said— and I don’t know how to, to reciprocate, I never have—”

“Do you think that liking Martin the way he likes you would make you human?” Daisy asks bluntly.

“…Maybe.”

“That’s rubbish. No, it is,” she says, raising her voice over his protests, and John begrudgingly lets her finish. “I don’t know who taught you that there’s only one way worth loving people—well, I suppose I do, living in this society with you—but it’s wrong. Romance isn’t what makes us human, John.”

She reaches forward across his desk, and it’s an echo of his hand reaching for her, kilometres beneath the earth. He feels unmoored; he feels scrutinized, and raw with it. His hand trembles as it meets hers.

“Whatever’s wrong with you—and sure, I’d believe that there’s a lot—it’s not from a lack of love. Trust me.”

She squeezes his hand, his first point of human contact since they escaped the Buried together, and he remembers the promise he made to start trusting the people around him, and nods.

And over the next week Daisy sends him articles about aromanticism with obnoxious IS THIS U??? texts and knife emojis that feel out of character until he realizes she’s been spending time with Melanie. And he invites Georgie out for tea and finally apologizes for how they ended things back in uni, and she laughs and says she wishes she’d known he was struggling with it, she could have pointed him in the right direction, and he notices the black ring on her finger and makes the connection with a rueful smile.

And when Martin goes into the Lonely, John is ready to follow him because he _loves_ Martin, he knows he does—and his love isn’t _lesser_ for being different.

And the cows in Scotland are good.

**Author's Note:**

> This starts out like a tumblr post because I posted it [on tumblr](https://ineskew.tumblr.com/post/189566653302) a couple days ago before remembering that I should be backing up my writing to AO3. I might go back and expand it into a proper fic later, because I certainly haven't said everything I'm feeling about the concept. Anyway, ARO JOHN RIGHTS 👏
> 
>   
>  This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).


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